Have You Been "Repristinated" Lately?

When Bob and Joan got back from their summer vacation they found a card awaiting them from their church school. The note was from their teacher and it informed them that their classroom had been repristinated during their absence. They looked the word up in their dictionary at home but they couldn't find it. All they could do was wait until Sunday and see what had happened during their absence.

It didn't take them long to find out what had happened even though they still didn't know what the word meant. The room had been completely redecorated. The walls had been painted, the floors refinished, and their chairs were rivals to the colors of the rainbow. It looked like a brand-new room even though not a new thing had actually been added except paint and varnish—and. oh yes, work!

The teacher explained the word to them. Someone had got the idea from the word pristine which means the way things were in the beginning, brand-new. Then she went on into the lesson from there. Just as a room, or a house, or our car needs to be repaired, repainted, or renewed to make it look and work like new again, so do our lives.

The Christian is constantly cleaning house. He discards old, worn out, and useless ideas and information and replaces them with new ones. The ones that are still good he polishes up and uses again and again. The Christian life is one that is constantly being renewed again and again. As Jesus taught that we "must be born again" and Paul advised the early Church to be "transformed by the renewing of your mind" (Romans 12:2), so we must keep our lives fresh by continually renewing ourselves.

Keep me, O heavenly Father, from growing stale.